Where We Live: Bena, A Neighborhood: Crimes Are A Stranger Where Neighbors' Faces Are Familiar

June 28, 1999|By DAVE FAIRBANK Daily Press

BENA — The first robbery that lifelong resident Bill Henry Jenkins remembers hearing about in Bena was when his mother, Fannie, had her purse swiped from the front seat of her car in a store parking lot.

It was the mid-1970s, and he was 30 years old.

"I don't ever remember any crime to speak of around here," Jenkins, 53, said recently while tinkering with crab pots in back of his house on Mark Pine Road.

Nearly everyone knows each other, and until recently, it wasn't uncommon for residents to stop people in unfamiliar cars and ask where they were headed. Even now, among old-timers and "come-heres" alike, doors to homes and garages are open and cars are left unlocked.

"When we'd go away, we'd lock the front door just so people couldn't walk right in, but in the back of the house, 99 times out of 100, we'd leave it unlocked," said 62-year-old Graham Blake, who grew up here and is a member of the Gloucester County Board of Supervisors. "I never took the keys out of my truck. I'm probably asking for trouble, but I never had any reason to worry about it."

Maj. Mike Nicely of the Gloucester County Sheriff's Office said it's been at least two years since the Bena area experienced so much as a robbery. The closest thing to a crime spree are the marsh fires set every spring, which Nicely and local residents say is a way to get to wild asparagus and to keep down the snakes and mosquitoes.